
Class _ITS 3-^4^. 

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WALT WHITMAN 



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Whitman 

Gbe poet^OUberator of Moman 



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Copyright, 1905, by 
Mabel MacCoy Irwin 



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CONTENTS 

Dedication 9 

A Reflection n 

I. Woman's Subordination . . *. 15 

II. Generic Man 21 

III. Whitman's Estimate of Woman 24 

IV. Whitman Celebrates Two Great 

Loves . 29 

V. No Sex-Inequality 35 

VI. Sex-Function and Parenthood . 37 

VII. Changed Attitude Toward Sex 44 

VIII. Whitman Needs No Apologist . 47 

IX. Whitman's All-Inclusive Love . 52 

X. Women's Misunderstanding of 

Whitman 57 

XI. Hamilton Mabie's Indictment . 58 

XII. Sacredness of the Body ... 61 

XIII. A Woman Waits for Me . . 63 



8 CONTENTS 

XIV. Motherhood Woman's Crown- 
ing Attribute 67 

XV. " Race Suicide " 70 

XVI. Justified Motherhood ... 73 
XVII. Woman's Sex Freedom Imper- 
ative 74 

XVIII. Whitman's Greatest Work for 

Woman Yet to be Done . . 75 
XIX. Woman's Indebtedness to Walt 

Whitman . 77 



To All Those 

Who Esteem Truth above Opinion 

Freedom above Custom, and 

Love above Everything 



A REFLECTION 



In relation to Walt Whitman I feel 
as " one born out of due time" That he 
could have lived in my day, lived in my 
land, lived in a city only a few miles away, 
and I have made no pilgrimage to that 
city and to him, seems to me now in- 
credible. And yet I realize that, had I 
made that pilgrimage, I might not have 
known him, and, had I heard his words, 
I might not have understood. Verily 
one must be born again — born into the 
life of conscious unity with the race — 



ii 



12 A REFLECTION 

before Whitman can make himself felt, 
or his words be understood; since 

' Only themselves understand themselves and 

the like of themselves, 
As souls only understand souls/' 

I have but recently been born into the 
kingdom of Whitman; I am therefore 
but a little child — a little sister of the 
" Great Companions! 1 But none the 
less I am their kin, and in the following 
pages offer my tribute to the man who, 
I believe, has left on record words so 
infused with spirit and with life that they 
will write and speak themselves into the 
literature and language of the American 
people in years to come, as the words 



A REFLECTION 1 3 

of no other poet that our nation has 
produced. 

His words do not clothe his thoughts 
— this would be to hide them — they 
incarnate his spirit , and it is true — as 
those who experience their contact well 
know — that he who touches them 
" touches a man! } Through this con- 
tact life is quickened, life } s horizon lifted, 
and the meaning of life made plain. 

Whitman is creating a " taste " for 
himself; and I send forth this little book 
with the hope that it may prove an in- 
centive to others, tempting them to taste 
of " heaves of Grass " find it good, and 
be nourished thereby for further en- 
deavor; with the hope that his words 



14 A REFLECTION 

will " itch at their ears " till they at last 
be understood. 

I had thought to embody other essays 
herein, treating still further of woman 's 
liberation; but I have decided to let this 
interpretation of Whitman's message to 
woman stand alone. My life has been 
quickened and enriched by its writing; if, 
in the reading, other lives than mine are 
helped to feel with me the poet's quick- 
ening touch, then the double reward of 

receiver and giver is mine* 

M. M. I. 



* I have in process of preparation a book en- 
titled " Woman's Sex-Emancipation," in which I 
hope to treat the subject in a vital and thorough 
manner. 



Whitman 

<Jbe fl>oet*%iberator of TOoman 

" What place is besieged, and vainly 
. tries to raise the siege? 
Lot I send to that place a commander, 

swift , brave, immortal; 
And with him horse and foot — and 

parks of artillery, 
And artillery-men, the deadliest that 
ever fired gun." 

I. Woman's Subordination 




ALT WHITMAN wrote 
his " Leaves of Grass " 
more than half a century 
- ago. At that time woman's 
position in the world — even in our new 
world — was one of almost complete sub- 
ordination. The teachings of the pulpit 

15 



1 6 WHITMAN 

— though modified somewhat from the 
barbarity of the church fathers — still 
held her as mentally and spiritually infe- 
rior to man ; silence upon all public or im- 
portant matters was enjoined upon her; 
and the old Pauline idea that if wives 
would know anything they must ask their 
husbands at home, still prevailed. 

Economically woman was wholly de- 
pendent upon man. Almost no avenues 
of self-support were open to her. She 
had no individual life of her own; it was 
only in relation to father and husband 
that any dignity whatever was allotted 
to her; and to be known as the wife of 
some man, or mother of his children, 
w r as considered sufficient honor for so 
weak and inconsequential a vessel. 

Looked down upon by church and 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 1 7 

state; held economically dependent for 
her very existence upon the caprice of 
man; ground between the upper and 
nether millstones of his alleged superior- 
ity on the one hand, and her own phys- 
ical necessity on the other, there was 
but one way by which woman could sur- 
vive, and that was through the avenue 
of her sex. 

She was like a city besieged; cut off 
from her spiritual supplies above, cut off 
from her material supplies beneath, the 
tenure of her life became the tenure of 
the parasite, and existence was impos- 
sible save by subsisting on the life blood 
of him who thus denied and subjected 
her. As only by her could children be 
born, or man's sensual appetite be 
gratified, she was held as the means 



1 8 WHITMAN 

of perpetuating his name, acting the 
part of household drudge, or used 
as a toy to minister to his sex de- 
mands. 

A slave herself, she bore to her lord 
and master slave children; and thus it 
had been from the beginning — hu- 
manity was groping in the darkness of 
ignorance and bondage, unwittingly 
shutting itself off from the light of free- 
dom and truth. 

Into such a state of the world, and 
into such a condition for woman came 
Walt Whitman with his " Leaves of 
Grass " calling: 

" What place is besieged, and vainly tries to 

raise the siege? 
Lo ! I send to that place a commander, swift, 

brave, immortal; 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 19 

And with him horse and foot — and parks of 

artillery, 
And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever 

fired gun." 

Whitman, with penetrating vision, 
saw the knot of man's misconception 
which held woman in bondage, and riv- 
eted his own chains, and he set himself 
to its untying. His was the universal 
vision, and his a universal work. Wher- 
ever humanity lay in the bondage of ig- 
norance ; wherever wrongs held men and 
women captive, he spoke the words to 
let in the light, and he broke the chains 
to set the captive free. To all places 
besieged with errors — hoary with age 
— he sent a commander — the swift, 
brave, immortal words of truth. He 
found woman — the mother of the race 



20 WHITMAN 

— in bondage, crushed under the heel 
of her self-acknowledged inferiority, 
with no poet to champion her cause or 
set her free, and for her he began to sing 
his immortal songs: 

" Daughter of the lands did you wait for 

your poet ? 
Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth 

and indicative hand?" 



"I am the poet of the woman the same as the 

man, 
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to 

be a man, 
And I say there is nothing greater than the 

mother of men." 

From that time till now the siege has 
been raised; the battle for one half hu- 
manity's intellectual and economic free- 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 21 

dom successfully waged, and the thought 
has been insinuating itself into the mind 
of the world, that woman is not only 
somewhat in her relation to man; but 
that she is an individual — with individ- 
ual rights — in and of herself; that she 
is not only wife and mother, but a human 
being, first, last and always. Whitman 
has written the songs of woman's deliv- 
erance, let him who will write her laws. 

II. Generic Man 

IF you will read " Leaves of Grass " 
with a discerning eye, you will see that 
every message the poet brings to man as 
an individual, he brings equally to wom- 
an. He does not use the word " man ' 
in its generic sense, letting us infer that 



22 WHITMAN 

he means woman as well ; but he specifies, 
leaving no room for doubt. 

" The Female equally with the Male I sing." 

" Only that which proves itself to man and 
woman* is so." 

" I launch all men and women* forward with 
me into the unknown." 

" And I say to any man or woman* Let your 
soul stand cool and composed before a 
million universes." 

" What do you suppose I would intimate to 
you in a hundred ways but that man or 
woman* is as good as God." 

" The great city is that which has the greatest 
man or woman'' * 



* These italics are mine. — The Author. 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 23 

It is just possible there comes to a man or 
woman* the divine power to use words." 

Then toward that man or woman* swiftly 
hasten all." 



I might go on indefinitely quoting his 
words to show how entirely equal, to his 
mind, are man and woman; but this suf- 
fices to illustrate his method. Whitman 
does not argue the matter, he simply 
states the fact; he sows the seed of this 
truth in the mind of the world, and then 
continues his message to humanity with 
woman as one of its prime factors. 
Henceforth she was to be considered — 
not as a means to an end — but as some- 
what in and of herself. America — 
" the great women's land! The fem- 
inine! " had arrived. 



24 WHITMAN 

III. Whitman's Estimate of 

Woman 

IN his estimate of woman, Whitman 
shows great keenness of analysis, great 
breadth of vision, and great understand- 
ing of the worth and dignity of the fem- 
inine. He has given to the world a new, 
a more complete estimate of woman than 
literature has yet furnished, and he is 
entitled to the distinction — as is no 
other poet past or present — of being 
the " Poet-Liberator of Woman." He 
could not set her free — this is a work 
she must do for herself; but he flashed 
upon her a transcendent light, that she 
might discover her own greatness — the 
greatness of which she is still ignorant 
— " Great, great, indeed, far greater 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 25 

than they know is the sphere of woman." 
He uncovered her to herself, that she 
might know her own worth, then left her 
afraid and abashed at her own unveiling. 
Anne Gilchrist has said: "Whitman's 
poems for woman are a veil woven 
out of her own soul, never touched upon 
even with a rough hand." This veil still 
hides her from herself, and she does not 
realize her own greatness or what Whit- 
man has done for her deliverance. 

' You womanhood divine, mistress and source 
of all, whence life and love and aught 
that comes from life and love." 



1 Think of womanhood and you to be a 

woman ; 
The creation is womanhood; 
Have I not said that womanhood involves all ? 



26 WHITMAN 

Have I not told how the universe has nothing 
better than the best womanhood ? " 

Yes, he has told it in many ways and 
with a mighty tongue : 

" Unfolded out of the folds of the woman, 
man comes unfolded, and is always to 
come unfolded; 

Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of 
the earth, is to come the superbest man of 
the earth; 

Unfolded only out of the friendliest woman, 
is to come the friendliest man; 

Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a 
woman, can a man be form'd of perfect 
body ; 

Unfolded only out of the inimitable poem of 
the woman, can came the poems of man — 
(only thence have my poems come) ; 

Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant 
woman I love, only thence can appear 
the strong and arrogant man I love; 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 27 

Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well- 
muscled woman I love, only thence come 
the brawny embraces of the man; 

Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's 
brain, come all the folds of the man's 
brain, duly obedient; 

Unfolded out of the justice of the woman, all 
justice is unfolded; 

Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman 
is all sympathy: 

A man is a great thing upon the earth, and 
through eternity — but every jot of the 
greatness of man is unfolded out of 
woman, 

First the man is shaped in the woman, he 
can then be shaped in himself." 

In this poem we see that Whitman 
recognizes woman as at once the begin- 
ning and end of all things; the crown- 
ing work of creation. In her the circle 
of life completes itself. From and by 



28 WHITMAN 

her, humanity exists and finds its source 
and outlet again. 

" Be not ashamed, women, your privilege en- 
closes the rest and is exit of the rest, 

You are the gates of the body, and you are 
the gates of the soul. 

" The female contains all qualities and tem- 
pers them, 

She is in her place and moves with perfect 
balance, 

She is all things duly veiled, she is both pas- 
sive and active; 

She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, 
and sons as well as daughters. 

" As I see my soul reflected in Nature, 

As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible 

completeness, sanity, beauty, 
See the bent head and arms folded over the 

breast, the Female I see." 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 2Q 

Whenever I read these words descrip- 
tive of the " eternal feminine " as Whit- 
man saw her, I wish I were an artist that 
I might paint this woman of " inex- 
pressible completeness, sanity, beauty." 
This woman with " bent head and arms 
folded over the breast " — the attitude 
of self-consecrated motherhood — that 
I might make her immortal on canvas 
as he has made her immortal with his 
pen. 

IV. Whitman Celebrates Two 
Great Loves 

WHITMAN celebrates two great 
loves — the love of the sexes, and 
the love of comrades ; he never confounds 
the two, nor seeks to make the one take 



30 WHITMAN 

the place of the other. Each in its way 
is distinct, supreme, eternal; both are 
necessary to man's or woman's fulfill- 
ment. " I will write," he says, " the 
evangel-poem of comrades and of love." 
To him these are the two great factors 
of life, and he chants the utility and 
beauty of the one as freely as the other. 
The first great factor, sex, belongs to, 
and is expressive of, the procreative urge 
of the world — 

" Urge and urge and urge, 

Always the procreant urge of the world, " 

and the other to that sweet and satisfy- 
ing relation of brother to brother, and 
sister to sister, — comradeship — which 
alone makes all sane living possible. 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 3 1 

" Fast-anchored, eternal, O love! O woman 
I love! 

bride! O wife! more resistless than I can 

tell the thought of you! 
Then separate, as disembodied or another born, 
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consola- 
tion, 

1 ascend, I float in the regions of your love, 

O man, 

sharer of my roving life. 

We may not conclude from this poem 
that Whitman regarded comrade-love 
as higher or more spiritual than sex-love 
— only different. 

1 Have you thought there could be but a single 

Supreme? 
There can be any number of Supremes — one 
does not countervail another, any more 
than one eyesight countervails another." 



V- 



32 WHITMAN 

Man's love for woman anchors him 

— holds him close to the heart of things 

— is his harbor of peace, his rest, his 
home ; while the comrade-love gives him 
scope and breadth of companionship, as 
he sails life's deep and trackless seas. 

And yet our poet realized that the 
most perfect sex-love involves all loves, 
all relationships — completing itself in 
comradeship ; for he sings : 

" Lover divine and perfect comrade; 
Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain.'' 

And again : 

" Yet, O my Soul Supreme! . . . 

Knowest thou prophetic joys of better, loftier 

love's ideal — the divine wife, the sweet, 

eternal, perfect comrade?" 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 33 

It is said that Whitman never knew 
a great love ; never awoke to the " master 
passion "; that the only question he put 
to everything — sex-love included — 
was this: " Will it help breed one good- 
shaped, well-hung man, and a woman to 
be his perfect and independent mate? ' 
— all other love to him meant comrade- 
ship. This may possibly be true; but he 
laid the foundation upon which the 
" master passion " must build, unless it 
would forever leave tragedy in its wake 
— - the foundation of the woman as the 
independent mate of the man. 

I cannot forego, however, the fol- 
lowing exquisite love-lyric that he 
gives us in " The Mystic Trumpter," 
in which the spirit of love itself seems 
voiced : 



34 WHITMAN 

" Blow again trumpeter ! and for thy theme, 
Take now the enclosing theme of all, the 

solvent and the setting, 
Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and 

the pang, 
The heart of man and woman all for love, 
No other theme but love — knitting, enclosing, 

all-diffusing love. 

" O how the immortal phantoms crowd 

around me! 
I see the vast alembic ever working, I see and 

know the flames that heat the world, 
The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of 

lovers, 
So blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark 

and night to death; 
Love, that is day and night — love, that 

mocks time and space, 
Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with 

perfume, 
No other words but words of love, no other 

thought but love." 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 35 

V. No Sex-Inequality 

IN the matter of sex-fulfillment, Whit- 
man makes no distinction between 
man and woman. He does not for a 
moment allow that — in the nature of 
things — their necessities are contradict- 
ory; and this, too, in the face of man's 
abnormal sex-development, and woman's 
equally abnormal sex-deficiency — al- 
though I doubt if this was as marked in 
his day as in our own. He assumes that 
what is integrally good for one, is good 
for the other — admitting no inequality 
here any more than elsewhere. 

Any sane treatment of this subject 
must admit that, while man and woman 
are distinctive, they are yet complemen- 



36 WHITMAN 

tary, and there can be no real sex need 
in the one, that is not met by and an- 
swered to in the other. And it should 
be plain to those who give sober thought 
to the subject, that any state or condition 
of civilization which decries or fails to 
recognize this fact, is a false condition, 
and a false civilization. 

This false idea Whitman saw could 
be remedied only by letting in upon it 
the light of truth, bringing men and 
women to a primal sanity; and there is 
no doubt but that this full, wholesome 
unveiled admiration and exaltation of 
sex shall, in the end, prove the precipient 
that shall order and direct it into chan- 
nels of purity and health. 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 37 



VI. Sex-Function and Parenthood 

IN Whitman's dealing with matters 
of sex, there is one thing most notice- 
able: he never dissociates the use of 
sex-function from parenthood. He rec- 
ognizes nothing of what Bernard Shaw 
so cleverly satirizes as " the greatest in- 
vention of the nineteenth century — the 
artificial sterilization of marriage!" 
Whitman sings of " What the divine 
husband knows," of " the work of fa- 
therhood," and of " the great chastity 
of paternity ' in such language, that 
it might be embodied in psalm and 
sung in the congregations of the 
righteous. 



38 WHITMAN 

" I shall demand perfect men and women out 
of my love-spendings. 

" I shall look for loving crops from the birth, 
life, death and immortality I plant so lov- 
ingly now." 

And all this, too, at a time in our 
history when to speak of the act of be- 
getting in anything but a shamed whisper, 
was to be considered bold and immodest 
to the last degree. Many of us acquaint- 
ed with the growing body of literature 
upon this subject, and accustomed to 
hear these things discussed in open meet- 
ing, are not shocked to-day by his words ; 
but when " Leaves of Grass " first saw 
the light, even the far-seeing philoso- 
phers felt that to speak of the sex- 
passion with such utter openness of 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 39 

approval, was to run the risk of 
making void everything the poet had 
written. 

I know that there are those who claim 
that Whitman's idea of love is of a trans- 
itory and irresponsible nature — that 
he believed in and advocated the yield- 
ing to sex-impulse with no thought or 
care for antecedents or consequents — 
and there are some of his poems which, 
on the surface, warrant this conclusion; 
but it is a surface conclusion at best. It 

is true that in some of his poems, notably : 
One Hour to Madness and Joy " and 
From Pent-Up Aching Rivers " we 
catch this strain celebrating sex-delights, 
as if pleasure alone were the end to be 
sought. But even here we find these 
words : 



(< 



u 



40 WHITMAN 

" O savage and tender achings! 

I bequeath them to you, my children. " 

And again: 

" Singing the song of procreation, 
Singing the need of superb children, and therein 
superb grown people; 

" I celebrate you act divine, and you children 
prepared for." 

In a recently published journal of his, 
we find the following paragraph: " It is 
said, perhaps rather quizzically, by my 
friends, that I bring civilization, politics, 
the topography of a country, and even 
the hydrography, to one final test, — 
the capability of producing, favoring, 
and maintaining a fine crop of children 
— a magnificent race of men and women. 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 4 1 

I must confess I look with comparative 
indifference on all lauded triumphs of 
the greatest manufacturing, exporting, 
gold-and-silver-producing nation, in com- 
parison with a race of really fine physical 
perfectionists." 

If ever there walked a man who felt 
to fulness the purport of the saying, " No 
man liveth to himself and no man dieth 
to himself," that man was Walt Whit- 
man. Every poem, every word springs 
from and contributes to this sense of 
unity with the race — with America 
first, and after America with all the 
world. He saw himself as a link in the 
mighty chain of humanity, and every act 
of his fraught with an eternal meaning. 
What wrong, what folly then to read 
into his words concerning sex — the very 



42 WHITMAN 

source of race continuity — a meaning 
which would make of him a libertine, 
with no thought or care except for that 
which ministered to his immediate sense- 
gratification. 

As John Burroughs has pointed out 
to us, had Whitman merely talked about 
sex we should not have objected so; but 
when he embodied sex-acts and repre- 
sented himself as doing them, it seemed 
time for the prudent to withdraw their 
support. 

His determination to^thus tregt._the 
subject of sex was evidenced from the 
beginning. In his first poem, " Start- 
ing from Paumanok," he openly avows 
his purpose; he tells in unmistakable 
language what he is determined to 
do: 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 43 

" And sexual organs and acts! do you concen- 
trate in me, for I am determined to tell 
you with courageous, clear voice to prove 
you illustrious. ,, 

And he declares elsewhere he will do 
this, even though he stand sole among 
men. He further tells us that it is his 
conviction that " the repressing of any 
direct statements concerning sex, has led 
to states of ignorance, depletion and 
covered-over disease, forming certainly 
a main factor in the world's woe. A 
non-scientific, non-aesthetic, and eminent- 
ly a non-religious condition." To rem- 
edy this he outlined an attitude; that it 
should be taken for granted that " mo- 
therhood, fatherhood, sexuality and all 
that, belongs to them, can be asserted, 
where it comes to question, openly, joy- 



44 WHITMAN 

ously, proudly, without shame or the 
need of shame. 



VII. Changed Attitude Toward 
Sex 

IN his " Backward Glance o'er trav- 
eled Roads," Whitman tells us that 
he felt the time had come when the at- 
titude of " superior men and women ' 
must be changed towards things of sex, 
and he set himself to bring about this 
change. For this we should be eternally 
grateful — even though he used severe 
measures to accomplish his purpose. So 
important did he consider this that he 
says: " Of this feature intentionally 
palpable in a few lines, I shall only say 
the espousing principle of those lines so 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 45 

gives breath of life to my whole scheme, 
that the bulk of the pieces might as well 
have been left unwritten were those lines 
omitted "; and he asserts that his work 
must stand or fall with them. He saw 
that the perversions, abnormalities — as 
well as the pathological conditions — of 
sex, could be dealt with only by a frank 
avowal of its usefulness, and the ardent 
support of its inherent goodness and 
beauty. And he says elsewhere, " Any- 
thing short of this attitude impugns crea- 
tion from the outset." And he adds: 
" That is what I felt in my inmost heart 
and brain, when I only answered Emer- 
son's vehement arguments with silence, 
under the old elms of Boston Common." 
Whitman saw the danger that lay in 
his words, and he says: " Nor will my 



46 WHITMAN 

poems do good only, they will do just 
as much evil, perhaps more." This is 
already proving itself true ; for there be 
some who seek to excuse their loose and 
lawless living by quoting the words of 
Walt Whitman. At this, however, we 
should not wonder, since only to him or 
her who brings to these poems clean 
thoughts and wholesome experience do 
they convey their message of sweetness 
and light. For — as Thoreau has said 
— " For him to whom sex is impure, 
there are no flowers in nature. " 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 47 

VIII. Whitman Needs No 
Apologist 

I DO not take up my pen as an 
apologist for Whitman — he needs 
none; but it nevertheless is human- 
ity's loss that he who has done so much 
for the emancipation of the world from 
its errors should still be so grossly mis- 
understood. He knew that the ear of the 
masses was closed to him in his day — 
although he wrote for the masses. He 
knew that he — as all prophets and 
teachers of the past — must look to the 
future for his vindication. 

" Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what 
I am for; 



48 WHITMAN 

But you — a new brood, native, athletic, con- 
tinental — greater than before known — 
Arouse! for you must justify me." 

This is to be done, not by simply 
expounding him in words — his words 
are so simple that they expound them- 
selves. Not by founding some school 
in his name — this he distinctly pro- 
scribed. His justification must come 
from those who shall be like him in sen- 
timent, vision and life — since they and 
they alone can understand and justify 
him. 

" Only themselves understand themselves and 

the like of themselves, 
As souls only understand souls." 

" Men like me," he says, — " also 
women — our counterparts, perfectly 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 49 

equal — will gradually get to be more 
numerous — perhaps swiftly, in shoals. " 

Whitman may have been over-san- 
guine — ■ in his modesty — as to the time 
when men and women like him should 
appear in " shoals," but it is already true 
that there is a rapidly increasing demand 
for his words, showing that he has cre- 
ated an appetite for himself, and many 
are tasting and find him good. Never- 
theless heavy clouds still hang above 
some of his poems, through lack of 
proper study, or clean minds of those 
who read them. 

To show how cruel, how crude, aye 
how ludicrous has been the interpreta- 
tion of some of his most exquisite poems, 
take the one " To a Common Prosti- 
tute, " so often quoted in derision: 



50 WHITMAN 

" Be composed — be at ease with me — I am 
Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as 
Nature, 
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you, 
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you 
and the leaves to rustle for you, do my 
words refuse to glisten and rustle for you." 

Listening to the matchless music of 
this poem's beginning, and catching 
somewhat the spirit of its boundless 
love, even shallow critics hesitate to dis- 
approve; but when he adds: 

" My girl, I appoint with you an appoint- 
ment," 

they lose sight of his compassion, and 
give to his words the meaning of a com- 
mon liaison. Have you observed care- 
fully what follows the words " My 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 5 1 

girl, I appoint with you an appoint- 
ment "? 

" And I charge you that you make preparation 

to be worthy to meet me. 
And I charge you that you be patient and 

perfect till I come." 

Could any but Walt Whitman have 
been so delicate, so chivalrous to de- 
graded womanhood? Could any but 
Walt Whitman restore the self-respect 
of the poor creature — scorned even by 
the man who pushes her to her self- 
destruction? Behold the very essence 
of chivalry! If there be those so blind 
that they do not yet see the compassion 
of this man, that made him one with all 
the miserable and despised of the earth, 
let them read his poem " The City Dead 



52 WHITMAN 

House," and there they will see one who 
wept — not over the body of the dead 
Lazarus — but over the unclaimed body 
of the poor, dead, common prostitute. 



IX. Whitman's All-Inclusive 
Love 

WHITMAN so loved the world 
— just as it was — so loved men 
and women — just as they were — wise 
or foolish, pure or vile — that he was 
determined none should escape his love. 

" I make appointments with all. 
I will not have a single person slighted or left 
away." 

Seeing in himself — and every man 
— the germ of all evils as well as all 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 53 

goods, he made himself one with the 
evil-doer. He was not content when he 
had made himself one with their sane 
and natural delights, he would become 
one with their brawlings and coarseness, 
their looseness and vulgarity. He saw 
that of all man's wanderings from his 
primal sanity, he had gone the farthest 
away in matters of sex, and so he would 
swing him back to his reasonable, natural 
orbit by going with him — if not in fact 
then in sympathy — into the depths of 
sexual vices, imputing them to himself. 

" If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I 
become so for your sake." 

Or as Burroughs so well says — 
11 when the passion of human brother- 
hood is upon him he is balked by nothing ; 



54 WHITMAN 

he goes down into the social mires to 
find his lovers and equals." 

In thus identifying himself with lewd 
persons; in thus frankly imputing to 
himself all sins men are guilty of; in 
going into the depths to purify and lift 
man to the sunlit heights, he has done 
more to emancipate woman from her 
sex-bondage, than all the preaching and 
teaching she is likely to do in a hundred 
years. 

Men and women rise or fall together 
— together they are bond or free — and 
he who goes into the depths to liberate 
man from the bondage of his own sen- 
suality, snaps, at the same time, the 
chain of woman, whom he enslaves. 
" It was an heroic sacrifice, and atones 
for the sins of us all — the sins of per- 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 55 

verting, denying, and abasing the most 
sacred and important organs and func- 
tions of our bodies" to our peril, and 
the peril of generations to come. 

' Through me " — he cries — " forbidden 
voices ; 

Voices of sexes and lusts; voices veiled and I 
remove the veil, 

Voices indecent by me clarified and trans- 
figured. . . ." 

" Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy 
whatever I touch or am touched from." 



' The armies of those I love engirth me and 

I engirth them, 
They will not let me off till I go with them, 

respond to them, 
And discorrupt them, and charge them full 

with the charge of the soul." 



56 WHITMAN 

And in that poem, " Native Mo- 
ments," in which he seems to revel in 
looseness and indecency, we find these 
words at its conclusion: 

" O you shunned persons I at least do not 

shun you. 
I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your 

poet, 
I will be more to you than to any of the rest." 

If they made their bed in hell, in hell 
he would be with them. Let those of 
us to whom vicarious atonement has 
been a mystery till now, see the greatest 
of all object lessons, Walt Whitman; 
for verily he has borne our sins and 
iniquities, and by his stripes shall we be 
healed. 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 57 

X. Women's Misunderstanding of 
Whitman 

IT is true that most women misunder- 
stand Whitman, equally with men; 
and yet he felt assured that woman 
would understand him. 

" To women certain whispers of myself be- 
queathing, their affection me more clearly 
explaining. ,, 

The poems which especially repel 
women are those in which he treats of 
the intimate relation of the sexes. When 
they read those poems they have a sense 
of outraged privacy ; they feel that some- 
thing that should be sacred between 
lovers has been dragged into public view, 



58 WHITMAN 

and given public utterance — apparently 
to no purpose. It seems like an expose 
of that which, by its nature, should al- 
ways remain covered — that which em- 
bodies the mystery of creation. 

XI. Hamilton Mabie's Indictment 

THE most sweeping indictment that 
has appeared of late upon this part 
of his work is from the pen of Hamilton 
Mabie. He says: 

" The lack of fineness in Whitman; 
the insensibility to the appeal of the 
spiritual qualities of character . . . are 
very obvious when one studies his work 
in relation to women. There is nowhere 
any touch of that spiritual chivalry 
which nearly all the great poets have 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 59 

shared. . . . The dream of fair wom- 
an seems never to have come to Whit- 
man; if it had, he could not possibly 
have treated the most intimate relation 
between man and woman, as if it were 
a public function. " " And," he adds, 
" this is the more singular, because his 
was not a purely masculine genius ; there 
was a large infusion of the feminine in 
it — a certain diffused softness of feel- 
ing, a brooding affection." He also 
says that Whitman was not lacking in 
the imaginative faculty; but that " he 
had the richest endowment of imagina- 
tion that has yet been bestowed upon 
any American poet." 

Now it would seem strange that a man 
with a " large infusion of the feminine " 
in his nature, combined with an un- 



60 WHITMAN 

rivalled imagination, should have utterly 

failed in any true appreciation of the 
feminine, or of the sacredness of sex. Is 
it not more likely that this titanic moral- 
ist had an underlying purpose, a purpose 
so great that it warranted this drastic 
treatment, this heroic method? Is it 
not more likely that this man of mighty 
insight diagnosed the disease that is eat- 
ing out the heart of the world — the 
degradation and shame of sex — and 
probed it to the quick? 

" Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? 
Well, I have; for the April rain has, and the 
mica on the side of a rock has." 

When speaking of diseased sex-symp- 
toms, he says: "Literature is always 
calling in the doctor for consultation and 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 6 1 

confession, and always giving evasions 
and swathing suppressions in place of 
that ' heroic nudity ' on which only a 
genuine diagnosis of serious cases can 
be built." 



XII. Sacredness of the Body 

WALT WHITMAN was con- 
vinced that the only way to re- 
deem sex, and all that pertains to it, 
from the shame which surrounds it, from 
that " sneaking, furtive, mephitic " at- 
mosphere which pervades society and 
literature whenever sex is mentioned, 
was — first of all, to take it out of the 
realm of the hidden, the unfamiliar, 
bring it into the light, and deal with it 
Sat first hand- 



62 WHITMAN 

" Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, 
and none shall be less familiar than the 
rest." 

And his " Children of Adam " poems 
were written with a determined effort to 
impress the mind with the beauty and 
grandeur of the body. He sings of it 
in the same wondering and caressing 
manner that he sings of the " Splendid, 
silent sun," " The voluptuous, cool- 
breathed earth," or " The capricious 
and dainty sea." He makes of the body 
a sacred thing. 

" The man's body is sacred, and the woman's 
body is sacred. 

" O, I say, these are not the parts and poems of 

the body only, but of the soul. 
O, I say now, these are the soul ! " 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 63 

Walt Whitman has taken the human 
body — with all its parts and functions 
— and translated it into the substance of 
the soul, If this were his only work, his 
name would merit a place among the 
immortals. 



XIII. A Woman Waits for Me 

HIS poem " A Woman Waits for 
Me " — at once a morsel for 
his enemies, a puzzle to his critics, and 
a stumbling-block to his friends — is 
essentially a " poem of procreation " — 
and was so named when first published. 
It carries within itself its own justifica- 
tion. Written a half century ago, it is 
easily classified as prophetic. It portrays 
a type of woman that Whitman saw 



64 WHITMAN 

should some day appear — the type of 
woman that would respond to only such 
as he. It is a detailed description of 
her whom we now delight to call the 
" new woman " — a type of her in all 
things save that of sex-appreciation ; for 
of this she is still ashamed or fancies 
herself outgrown. 

" They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, 
shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, 
defend themselves, 

They are ultimate in their own right — they 
are calm, clear, well-possess'd of them- 
selves." * 

Here is another prophecy: " I say an 
unnumbered new race of hardy and 
well-defined women are to spread 
through all these states. I say a girl fit 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 65 

for these states must be free, capable, 
dauntless, just the same as a boy." 

In the " Song of the Broadaxe " he 
sketches for us yet another and all- 
inclusive type — finer than any — the 
picture of free, majestic womanhood: 

" Her shape arises, 

She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded 

than ever, 
The gross and soiled she moves among do not 

make her gross and soiPd, 
She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing 

is conceal'd from her 
She is none the less considerate or friendly 

therefor, 
She is the best belov'd, it is without exception, 

she has no reason to fear, and she does 

not fear, 
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp'd songs, smutty ex- 
pressions, are idle to her as she passes, 



66 WHITMAN 

She is silent, she is possessed of herself, they 

do not offend her, 
She receives them as the laws of Nature receive 

them, she is strong, 
She too is a law of Nature — there is no law 

stronger than she is." 

Whitman saw that the power to 
create a new world — wherein should 
walk lovers and comrades — lay in the 
hands of such women as these. Not by 
laborious effort to reform the already 
born criminal, but, by mothering a 
new race, rightly conceived. He says 
of himself that he was " well-begotten 
and rais'd by a perfect mother." And 
he tells us that he has sometimes thought, 
indeed, that the sole avenue and means 
of a reconstructed sociology depend, 
primarily, on a new birth, elevation, 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 6^ 

expansion, invigoration of woman, af- 
fording for races to come (as the con- 
ditions that antedate birth are indis- 
pensible) a perfect motherhood. " 



XIV. Motherhood Woman's 
Crowning Attribute 

AGAIN he says: " Maternity is 
woman's crowning attribute; ever 
making her — in loftiest spheres — 
superior to the man." Whitman has 
made woman the equal of man every- 
where else, now he tells us of her 
superior function, motherhood. This 
superior endowment of woman has al- 
ways called forth from man something 
akin to worship. The master paintings 
of the world have had for their inspira- 



68 WHITMAN 

tion a mother with her babe at her 
breast — at once the source and sus- 
tenance of all living things. And to-day 
— - despite the sex bondage of the most 
of womankind — motherhood still com- 
pels man's homage and respect 

The worship that woman naturally 
receives and accepts from the man who 
loves her, arises — whether either 
knows it or not — from the fact of her 
potential motherhood — the eternal 
mystery of creation, that finds its culmi- 
nation in her — and woe is she when 
the conditions of maternity are made 
for her so hard that she must needs 
divest herself of that crown. 

In Whitman's poem of " Faces " he 
paints for us this picture: 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 69 

" Behold a woman ! 

She looks out from her quaker cap — her face 

is clearer and more beautiful than the sky. 
She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded 

porch of the farm-house, 
The sun just shines on her old white head. 

" The melodious character of the earth, 
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot 

go, and does not wish to go, 
The justified mother of men." 

This, too, belongs largely to the 
poems of prophecy; for neither in his 
day nor yet in our own, has mother- 
hood been justified. Let the crime of 
abortion — which is so common to-day 
that scarcely a home can be found 
where murdered infancy lifts not its 
dumb cry — bear witness that my words 
are the words of soberness and of truth. 



70 WHITMAN 



XV. " Race Suicide " 

THERE is a protest at the present 
time that America's birthrate is 
decreasing ; that the native stock is dying 
out, and that the extinction of the Amer- 
ican race is impending. The immigra- 
tion statistician tells us that this comes 
as the result of the large foreign ele- 
ment, which so reduces the wages of 
our workmen, that their children " have 
never been born." 

The sociologist finds the reason in 
" the prosperity of the country which 
always breeds vices side by side with its 
luxuries — the chief vice being the 
shirking of the responsibility of a 
family," and he tells us that " Race sui- 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 7 1 

cide " is not so much due to the struggle 
for existence, as the outcome of selfish 
affluence. 

Both of these statements contain, 
without doubt, a modicum of truth; 
but we must look deeper for the real 
cause of the decrease of a nation's 
birthrate. 

Motherhood has not been " justi- 
fied " ! Our children, for the most 
part, are born — not of mothers — - but 
of wives in the performance of their 
" marital duties " ! Motherhood is 
forced upon woman — she has no 
choice as to when or how many children 
she shall bear. Long has she felt the 
injustice of this position; long has she 
secretly rebelled. She has been made 
to see that there is no dignity in en- 



72 WHITMAN 

forced motherhood — all the moralists 
to the contrary notwithstanding — and 
she is refusing to bear unwelcome chil- 
dren. She has become skillful in the 
use of drugs, appliances and multiform 
methods of prevention, and these she 
uses to escape conception. If wives 
have not yet found the way of freedom 
from sex-slavery, they have found the 
way of sterility, and it is to the use of 
such knowledge as this, that our statis- 
ticians must look to discover the prime 
reason of a nation's lowered birthrate. 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 73 

XVI. Justified Motherhood 

JUSTIFIED motherhood we shall 
never have, until we have free, in- 
telligent and self-determined mothers. 
Neither enforced motherhood, nor 
mechanically hindered motherhood can 
ever be justified. When at last, driven 
by her pain and despair at the ig- 
norant perversion and betrayal of her 
love to the demands of lust, woman 
rises into the consciousness that in her 
hands rests the future welfare of the 
world; into the consciousness that she 
is indeed " the gates of the body and 
the gates of the soul " and keeps guard 
over that sacred portal, then — and not 
till then — may we rightfully sing of 
"The Justified Mother of Men." 



74 WHITMAN 

XVII. Woman's Sex Freedom 
Imperative 

WOMAN'S political and economic 
freedom are important; her 
religious freedom is necessary; but her 
sex-freedom — freedom to control her 
own life-giving function — is impera- 
tive — not only for her own further 
development, but for the development 
of the race. Without this, her political, 
economic, and even her religious free- 
dom, are mere, meaningless words, — 
mere palliatives, which dull the pain 
of her galling chains and keep her 
from discovering the real source of her 
bondage, and which way her freedom 
lies. 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 75 

Since motherhood is " woman's 
crowning attribute — ever making her 
in loftiest spheres superior to the man " 
— how evident it becomes that until in 
this loftiest sphere she is recognized as 
supreme — and her will becomes the 
law of man — nothing in the world 
can find its true relation, or any of the 
great problems of life be truly solved. 

XVIII. Whitman's Greatest Work 
for Woman Yet to be Done 

IN helping to this, Whitman's great- 
est work for woman is yet to be 
accomplished; and that America may 
not lose sight of the all-important issue 
he puts this final, this test question to 
her: 



76 WHITMAN 

" With all thy gifts, America, 

Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking 

the world, 
Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee — 

with these and like of these vouchsafed 

to thee, 
What if one gift thou lackest (the ultimate 

human problem never solving) 
The gift of perfect women fit for thee — 

what if that gift of gifts thou lackest? 
The towering feminine of thee? the beauty, 

health, completion, fit for thee ? 
The mothers fit for thee? 

The women of America must and 
will answer this question. To them 
the daughters of all other lands are 
looking for the way of deliverance. 
Motherhood must be free ! Mother- 
hood shall be justified! 



THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 77 

XIX. Woman's Indebtedness to 
Walt Whitman 

AND ages hence — when woman's 
sex-hondage is as a dream for- 
gotten, when she stands regnant by 
divine right — the self-elected mother 
of a new race — she shall remember 
with deepest gratitude the name of 
him who called to her while she was 
yet asleep, who sang for her while she 
was yet in chains, and whose songs did 
more to set her free than all the songs 
that were ever sung — the name of 
Walt Whitman. 



LofC. 



